Thursday, December 22, 2016

Yes, Dubya, Now I Miss You (David Swanson)

When
George W. Bush made the case for attacking and destroying the nation of
Iraq, he made claims that, if true, would have justified nothing. And
he proposed as evidence for those claims fraudulent, implausible, and
even ridiculous pieces of information. But he was expected to produce
evidence. There was no assumption that he should simply be taken on
faith.

Those standards are gone.

The common wisdom that Vladimir Putin hacked into Democratic and
Republican emails and fed the Democratic ones to WikiLeaks which
delegitimized an otherwise legitimate election, is not based on any
public evidence, and none is asked for by most believers.

The premise that possessing weapons justifies being attacked was
patently absurd in 2003. The U.S. openly possessed all the weapons it
claimed Iraq had. The premise that (further) exposing a rigged primary
harms, rather than facilitating, election integrity, is strictly nuts in
2016. WikiLeaks and any source(s) deserve our thanks.

But the standard of evidence has been altered. It's certainly
possible the Russian government hacked the emails. It's even possible
that Russia was the source for WikiLeaks, and that Julian Assange and
Craig Murray are deluded or lying, that Bill Binney is mistaken, and
that all the anomalies in the claims of Russian hacking can be explained
away. But the expectation that some sort of evidence should be produced
no longer exists.

One reason for this is that during the Obama years wars were launched
without public debates and marketing campaigns. Continuing and
escalating the war on Afghanistan was simply done, without discussion.
Continuing war on Iraq -- which still continues -- was done without
requiring any of the pretenses used to escalate it in 2003. Launching
hundreds of mini-wars in the form of drone murders took public debate
out of the picture by definition, just as the presidential possession of
a nuclear button has aided the decades-long re-imagining of Congress as
a group of court jesters.

When Obama has made unproven and implausible claims about looming
massacres in Libya or Iraq, or chemical weapons use in Syria, or
airplanes shot down in Ukraine, or coups in Ukraine, or "moderate"
terrorists, or Iranian nukes, or drone war success in Yemen, or the
nature or legality of drone murders, there has been no general request
for evidence. Even with the claims about Syrian chemical weapons in
2013, the public and Congress said no to escalating the war in a visible
manner, but did not focus on demanding evidence for claims.

Enter Trump, professing a desire to (continue to) "kill their
families" and to "steal their oil," and gone is any rationale for making
any dubious claims in need of any evidence. If the Trumpists will
believe in millions of repeat voters just because he says so, the
anti-Trumpists will believe any anti-Trump-and-Russia story just because
the CIA says so.

This thinking is not necessarily conscious and explicit. Those intent
on taking the CIA on faith remain proud of considering the evidence of
climate change. But when you combine anti-Trump with pro-Hillary plus
xenophobia plus the demonization of Putin, some people lose all
perspective. And when the past 13 years have been spent eroding the idea
that a public case against a foreign target should include evidence,
the sale is made quite easily.

So, yes, I miss the days of Dubya. I miss the days when the U.S.
government pretended not to torture.

The President "Elect" now promises
to torture. Why? Because President Obama forbade prosecution of the
crime of torture, allowed torture to continue, outsourced much of it,
and replaced a lot of the torture program with a new murder program
(using drones). And because the U.S. media pretended that torture had
been legal under Bush and was somehow made illegal by an Obama
"executive order," which is not a law.

I miss the days when lawless prisons like Guantanamo that kept people
imprisoned without charge or conviction were deemed shameful and worthy
of abolition. These Obama supposedly legalized with another "executive
order." Now Trump says he'll pack the prisons.

I miss the days when unconstitutional mass surveillance, or mass
deportations, or the rewriting of laws by presidents was illicit and
scandalous. Now these things are generally accepted. So here's my
question to good liberal Americans:How is not impeaching Bush working out for you?

Letting Bush's impeachable offenses slide almost required letting
Obama's slide, as there was such overlap. But now you've created a
presidency of truly imperial power.

The point of impeaching and removing Bush would not have been to make
Dick Cheney president, any more than the point of studying history is
that your school has assigned that class to the football coach.

The point of impeaching Bush would have been to create a President
Cheney in fear of being impeached, followed by other presidents in fear
of being impeached.

Why can basketball announcers grasp that Duke's Allen Grayson might
not be tripping opponents this year if he'd been suspended for a game or
two when he did it last year, but political analysts can't grasp that
if Bush had been impeached, or even an effort made to impeach him, we
might not now -- like India -- have a twitter-loving right-wing
nationalist preparing to create Muslim registries and enforced flag
worship?

So, here's an idea. We can't go back in time. But we can start now.
Trump is going to violate the Constitutional bans on domestic and
foreign presents and "emoluments" on day one, and likely begin piling up
original as well as familiar impeachable offenses during his first
week.

But just as the only conceivable way to get Trump into office was to
nominate Hillary Clinton, the surest way to derail an impeachment
campaign against Trump will be to load it down with dubious claims about
Russia.

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.